Help Your Students Identify Critical Content (Marzano DQ:5)

Have you ever tried a reading activity with your students that calls for them to highlight what is important in a reading passage?  If your students are anything like mine, they either go "highlighter crazy" and highlight almost everything on the page or just write "it's all important" in highlighter at the top. 

If everything is the most important part, nothing is.  The same problem arises when students skim.  Many simply cannot pick out what is important from what isn't.  Dr. Marzano picked up on this shortcoming, and placed it as number five on his teaching map.

The key with this element (as with most things) is to not assume your students can identify what is important - you must intentionally train them in this skill, then provide many small-scale opportunities for them to practice it.  Most of my resources utilize this element in some way, but the ones that do so the most overtly are my Differentiated Readings, Reading Response Journals, and Native American Hypothesis Activities.  

Click the links below to take a look at them, and be sure to follow this blog and my store for more great Social Studies resources and Marzano posts!

• Differentiated Readings
• Reading Response Journals
• Native American Hypothesis Activities
• My Store